Catch 22
by BMT and SuperMoose
Summary: TFA: "Prowl would never admit it to anyone, but it rankled when Lockdown called him 'kid.'" Doesn't actually have anything to do with Lockdown. By BlackMarketTrombones.


MORE SPOILERS FOR ENDGAME, PART 2!!!!!!!!!! This was completely unintentional. I was, in fact, actively trying to avoid that particular plot point. It seems I am too preoccupied with it.

I'm not sure if there will be anyone reading this that is unaware of the series' resolution, but I'd hate to ruin it for anyone so I posted the warning just in case.

Written because I have read far too many fics about young, nubile Prowl, which is all good and well, I suppose, but "Five Servos of Doom" implies to me that this is inaccurate.

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Catch-22

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Prowl would never admit it to anyone, but it rankled when Lockdown called him 'kid.'

This was due in part to the fact that it was such an unfounded presumption—as machines, Cybertronians could, with proper maintenance, look just as new at a hundred thousand stellar cycles as they did fresh off the assembly line and were, in theory, immortal, strength of spark being the only internal factor determining longevity. Thus, there was no set standard by which to judge somebot's age based purely off appearance.

Most mechs, however, could estimate the stellar cycles another had seen fairly easily: certain models were more common at certain periods (but Prowl's body type was something of a classic, popular throughout the ages), cultural nuances from varying eras cropped up in actions and speech (but Prowl spoke rarely and kept still; his was an epoch distorted and lost by the misty passage of time and he a remnant of an era too long forgotten to be missed), optics acquired a world-weary tint after the first dozen centuries (but Prowl's visor, adopted to hide where he looked from potential enemies, had the convenient benefit of concealing his aching, ageless lassitude)… Then there was the distinctive brashness that characterized nearly every young bot.

He'd been considerably brash the first—and last—time he…conducted himself with Lockdown. It was hardly surprising that the ramshackle bounty hunter simply assumed he was a recent reissue with a somewhat retro design. (He could not know that Prowl was among the very first of his model churned out of the factories.) Unsurprising, but it still rankled.

In truth, he was old—old enough to have ducked when the first shots of the Great War were fired, old enough to have walked the crystal gardens of Praxus at the height of the Golden Age, old enough to remember a time before there were such distinctions as Autobot and Decepticon. In that miasmic era, long before the brutality of war made it a necessity to grow the Pit up as quickly as possible, age was more a mindset than anything and Prowl had spent millennia in the awkward, angry transition from younglinghood to full maturity when the first rumblings of dissent in Kaon made a draft-dodger of him. By the time the Autobot recruiters finally caught up with him, it was less self-righteous principle than stubborn, prideful habit that drove him to resist conscription and landed him in the stockades.

When he cared to think of that experience, he remembered it as being exceptionally unpleasant.

Of course, the first few stellar cycles with Yoketron were no better. He eventually found happiness, or something close to it, but it was a long time before he started to see that tranquil little dojo as anything more than his latest prison.

Then it was gone.

Not literally, of course. Despite rather extensive damage, the dojo was still standing. He could have stayed had he so chosen, but everything that made it…well, not home, but not intolerable (Yoketron, his lessons, etc.), was gone leaving only painful memories and…emptiness.

Yes, when he looked back on his long life, all he could see was a series of completely avoidable blunders that had left him empty. Unfulfilled. It was an unpleasant thing to realize that one's life has been nothing but one huge mistake, another black mark marring the less than pristine record of Cybertronian history.

Until recently, anyway, when a little space bridge repair crew broke his millennia of self-imposed isolation (from which he now realized he had subconsciously never intended to return, sinking deeper and deeper into the comforting numbness of meditation) and dragged him unintentionally—but quite forcibly—into reality. Prowl wondered—vaguely, distractedly, because most of his attention was focused on gathering and condensing the far-flung essence of the All-Spark—if he'd ever been there before. Certainly, he'd never felt so alive as when he was struggling for his life and those of his…comrades? Teammates? No, more than that. Friends. Strange how that one simple word filled him with…something warm, something he couldn't quite name.

Distantly, he noted Starscream's lifeless shell plummeting to the earth in a graceless tangle of twitching limbs. It was unsettling. No, more than that. It made the core of his spark quiver with a trill of…of fear. _That_ was unsettling.

He thought he'd made his peace with death—it was a part of the natural order of things, just a portion of the endless cycle that was the universe. He'd seen much death. He'd experienced more than his fair share of life.

Except that he hadn't, really. That long period of emptiness wasn't living so much as merely existing. He'd accepted death. He'd come to terms with his own transience.

Then he found a reason for living.

Having experienced just how fulfilling life could be, Prowl found quite suddenly that he didn't want to give it up. He'd been functioning for untold eons but it was only in the past few months (an infinitesimal fraction of his massive life-span) that he'd truly been alive. He selfishly did not want to give up this unique euphoria so soon after having discovered it.

But there was Starscream plummeting to the earth, and the absence of any more All-Spark that followed ominously in the wake of his demise left only the unyielding certainty that _this was not enough._ The All-Spark was too far dispersed, too long scattered. He and Jazz alone could not gather it in time to stymie the inevitable destruction of Starscream's last, vindictive—petulant—strike from beyond the grave.

Prowl could not bear to lose his reason for living, the source of his newfound contentment, but it seemed he would either way.

Ultimately, that which gave him purpose and direction in life ended up compelling him unerringly to his death. The irony did not escape him even as he felt his very being ripped apart, overwhelmed by the raw, primal _power_ that was the All-Spark. He clung to his self as long as he could, long enough to pulled his doomed leader _(friend)_ from certain death, long enough to deeply resent his sudden demise (so untimely after he had lived so long and yet so very little). Long enough to wish he hadn't wasted so much time, to bemoan those empty eons of lonely existence.

Long enough to send a quick prayer to Primus, thanking him for the opportunity to live.

And then he was no more.


End file.
